Writing anything requires that you make thousands upon thousands of choices for your characters. This is why it can feel like so much fun to start a book, but once you are a hundred pages into it, you are ready to pitch it onto a bonfire. If you made a wrong turn on the path of choices, you can find yourself hip deep in tangled plot with no easy way out.
One of the common mistakes I make in early drafts is to let all of the rotten things that happen to my characters come from the outside. I think I do this because I like my characters, or maybe because, in an early draft, I don’t know them well enough.
I’ve found that letting my characters mess up leads to all kinds of fresh plot paths and story energy.
You can probably see where I’m going with this.
Ready….
Today’s advice: It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to be good. Yet. But you must get something down on the page today.
Set…
Today’s prompt: Put your character in an ordinary scene: babysitting, making lunch, texting friends, whatever, and allow her to make the absolute worst decisions possible for the scene. You’ll need to motivate her decision – let your mind run free. Make it a spectacular screw-up with ugly consequences.
TUESDAY EXTRA SPECIAL BONUS PROMPT!
Someone leaves a half-full bottle of tequila at the bottom of your driveway. Write about who left it and why.
(This is based on something that happened to me yesterday. Honest.)
TUESDAY SUPER-SPECTACULAR EXTRA SPECIAL BONUS PROMPT!
Combine the two prompts above.
Scribble…Scribble….Scribble!